Governing Education through Data and Digital Devices: An Analysis of the MEQ Education Dashboard

Abstract

This article analyzes the Education Dashboard developed by the Québec Ministry of Education (MEQ) in a context where digital data are playing an increasingly prominent role in school governance. It draws on insights from the sociology of quantification, critical data studies, and the theory of public policy instruments. The analysis is based on a qualitative, documentary, and interface-centered approach, complemented by an examination of the strategic documents framing the dashboard. The findings show that the dashboard privileges a representation of the education system centered on narrowly measurable dimensions, such as graduation, performance on ministerial examinations, enrolment, and resources, while relegating pedagogical processes, actual educational work, and local contexts to the background. They also highlight the structuring role of comparability, the risks of implicit rankings, and a tendency toward the symbolic recentralization of educational steering through data. The findings further indicate that, despite the heterogeneity of reference dates and data consolidation statuses, the dashboard interface tends to present these data as synchronous and comparable, thereby contributing to the naturalization of their timeliness and reliability, both of which remain open to question.